Speech recognition method of and system for determining the status of an answered telephone during the course of an outbound telephone call

A system for determining the status of an answered telephone during the course of an outbound telephone call comprising:

• an automated telephone calling device for placing a telephone call to a location having a telephone number at which a target person is listed;
• and
• a speaker-independent speech recognition system which, upon said telephone call being answered, initiates a prerecorded greeting which asks for the target person, receives an initial response, determines whether said initial response is being provided by an answering machine by distinguishing between a live person and a machine according to whether the initial response is longer than a predetermined time or whether a beep tone is detected, determine that a spoken response from has been received by an answering person, and performs a speech recognition analysis on said spoken response to determine the meaning of said spoken response;
• wherein, if said speaker-independent speech recognition system determines that said answering person is said target person, said speaker-independent speech recognition system initiates a speaker-independent speech recognition application with said target person, wherein the speaker-independent speech recognition application is an interactive speech application configured and arranged to provide a series of acoustic prompts to the answering person by telephonic interaction, wherein the speech recognition application comprises a Web access application, an educational application, a learning and lesson application, or a compliance application, and wherein the speaker-independent speech recognition system is configured to provide conditional responses based on the meaning of the spoken response as determined by the speaker-independent speech recognition analysis in accordance with a speaker-independent speech recognition enabled state of conversation selected from the group consisting of (1) the answering person indicates that he or she is the target person, (2) the answering person indicates that he or she is not the target person, (3) the answering person indicates that the target person is not present at the location, (4) the answering person indicates a hold request, (5) the answering person requests the identity of the caller, (6) the answering person indicates that the telephone number is not the correct number for the target person, and (7) the speaker-independent speech recognition analysis cannot determine the meaning of the spoken response from the answering person.